Community spirit

After tackling homelessness and drug dependency on the streets of London for four decades, the Rev Ken Leech, founder of the charity Centrepoint, is retiring. Sadly, there is much still to do, he tells Mark Gould

It was in 1968, during a 4am police raid on the Limbo Club in Soho, London, that the Rev Dr Kenneth Leech got the idea for the homeless charity, Centrepoint. Leech, in cassock and dog collar, was in Wardour Mews, outside the back entrance of the club with Elizabeth Reid, a police inspector, who was on a "juvenile roundup" - a trawl for amphetamine-fuelled youngsters.

Leech, the curate at St Anne's church in Soho, was out "loitering - being around, staying around, becoming a trusted person". His "loitering ministry" included helping kids who'd taken drug overdoses, and caring for the hungry and homeless. He recalls: "Elizabeth wondered what to do about these homeless kids. She said: 'Somebody ought to open a centre for people in trouble late at night.'" So he did.

Yesterday, on his 65th birthday, Leech retired after 40 years as a priest. When I met him last month in his chaotic, book-strewn flat on the Whitechapel Road in east London - just a stone's throw from Centrepoint's current headquarters - he was trying to decide which mementoes of his remarkable life to take into retirement.

As well as founding Centrepoint, Leech was involved in the creation of the Christian Socialist Movement. He was a director of the Runnymede Trust, a leading thinktank on promoting ethnicity and cultural diversity; he was a founder member of the Jubilee Group - a network of socialist Christians; and he was also one of the church's leading experts on drug culture and the social problems it creates.

A softly spoken man, his baldness and hooded eyes make him look a caricature "comfortable cleric." But his career has been one of action; a combination of practice and preaching to tackle prostitution, drugs, homelessness, racism and the rise of the far right. From the anti-National Front protests of the 1970s and 1980s, to Derek Beackon's victory in the local council election on the Isle of Dogs for the British National Party in 1993, Leech was part of the awkward squad, organising religious and community groups, writing and demonstrating.

His life as a priest has brought him into contact with prime ministers, a very young Paul Simon, and even the Kray gang - he winces when recalling that, as a former vicar in Bethnal Green, he narrowly avoided having to officiate at Reg Kray's Hollywood-meets-EastEnders funeral.

Leech is no longer associated with Centrepoint, but it may well represent an enduring memorial to him. It is a national organisation with a turnover of millions of pounds and more than 100 employees, and has given shelter and support to thousands of homeless people.

But it had humble beginnings in the basement of 57 Dean Street, Soho, on December 16, 1969. At the time, London's West End was experiencing an influx of economic migrants from the cities of Scotland and the north of England, drawn by images of "swinging London". Leech and Anton Wallich-Clifford (founder of the Simon Community, a charity for what were then described as "meths drinkers") realised urgent action was needed.

"I met Anton in a Soho pub and asked him how much money he had, and he replied that he was £8,000 in the red. I had £30 in the bank, so I said we better do something. The first night [at Centrepoint], nobody turned up and we thought we had made a mistake, but within a month we had 600 through the doors; 1,003 in the first four months and 5,000 in a year."

Volunteers came from Soho's cast of saints and sinners: probation officers, Roman Catholic sisters, and novices. The name Centrepoint was chosen as a direct challenge to the "affront to the homeless" that was architect Richard Seifert's infamous tower block Centre Point. The 385-ft tower at the south end of Tottenham Court Road stood empty for years, making millions for a property developer because a quirk in the law meant it was better to leave it empty than to tie it down to a particular rental review period.

Centrepoint flourished, but its attempts to dissuade young people from migrating to London didn't. "About 8% of all the young people seen by Centrepoint were from Glasgow, so we made up some leaflets for youth workers to distribute there, saying that it was very difficult to get accommodation in London. We were told that it didn't work because the kids were saying that it couldn't be any worse than where they were."

What does he think of this achievement? Without hesitation he replies: "I am appalled that it's still necessary - it's depressing, because homelessness in the 1960s was solvable. It was not the great national crisis that it is now. It came about because the government encouraged people to come to London to work, but as they were not creating affordable housing, they were encouraging homelessness." He adds that nothing has changed much in 35 years: "I feel the [New Labour] government is more bothered by the visibility of homelessness rather than the reality."

Drug rehabilitation was also a Leech passion. He founded the now defunct Soho Drugs Group in 1964, and forged close links with doctors working in the San Francisco counter-culture scene. "Doctors at the Haight-Ashbury medical centre warned that following the US example of prohibition would lead to disaster in England. And things began to go wrong under the influence of the late Dr Philip Connell, of the Maudsley Hospital, who in the late 1960s advised the Ministry of Health to cut down on heroin prescribing after a number of high-profile cases involving 'junkie doctors.'"

Leech blames the Dangerous Drugs Act in 1967 - which prevented "junkie doctors" from prescribing - for leaving addicts vulnerable to criminals and adulterated drugs. He welcomes moves to return to encouraging doctors to take more responsibility for prescribing pure heroin, and safe places to inject. "After so many wasted years, we need to try to reclaim the 'British system' and then move onwards, but government policy has made such a mess that we have more problems than we needed to have."

Leech was close to the Christian Socialist Movement, which now counts Tony Blair, along with a sizeable chunk of his cabinet, as members. But Leech never thought he could be a member and now feels it has become "a sort of religious arm of the Labour establishment". Indeed, he is scathing about the prime minister. "There is overwhelming evidence he is a Christian, but no evidence he is a Socialist."

Leech has been involved with voluntary organisations for more than 45 years, but he fears the sector may have lost sight of its true mission. "Just around here, I can count around 600 paid workers - for Centrepoint, St Botolph's, Turning Point, Thamesreach Bondway and the Salvation Army Mission at Whitechapel. Yet I know by name the few people sleeping rough in the park over there.

"You have to keep asking the question: 'Am I in the right place and doing the right thing?' I can't think of any voluntary organisation that has said: "We have done our job, we can fold".

· To mark its 35th anniverary, Centrepoint has teamed up with the Guardian. If you have benefited from Centrepoint's work, we'd like to hear from you to highlight their services: guardian@centrepoint.org

The CV

Age 65.

Status Single.

Lives Whitechapel, east London.

Education Hyde Grammar School, Manchester, and then King's College London, where he was a Sambrooke Scholar and read modern history. Went on to Trinity College Oxford to study theology, and was ordained in 1965.

Career A priest in Hoxton, Soho and Bethnal Green, London, and, for three years until 1979, the "advisor on exorcism and the occult" to the London Bishops.

Public life Founder and director of the Soho Drugs Group; founder and director of Centrepoint; director of the Runnymede Trust 1987-1990; and community theologian at St Botolph's church, Aldgate.